Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Ian Lavery and Ian Murray

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Is there not a legal contradiction in the Bill? A trade union has a duty under the Data Protection Act to keep in its records, but not to divulge, personal and private details relating to each member. If the Bill is passed, it will give the certification officer, the certification officer’s staff and the new assurers access to that information. That is a huge contradiction and I believe that it contravenes European law. Should we not consider that at the first possible opportunity?

[Ian Murray]

My hon. Friend is right that there are contradictions with the Data Protection Act and an inconsistency with articles 8 and 11 of the European convention on human rights. Those matters will come up when we discuss clause 37 and the cluster of amendments to it. Those inconsistencies highlight the way in which part 3 has been completely rushed through, without any proper consultation or dialogue with the people who are involved. There is also no identifiable problem that will be resolved.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) has just informed me that, as of 1.35 pm this afternoon, the Vote Office still did not have an impact assessment or a response to the consultation. [Interruption.] The Minister might say that that is not correct, but that information must be available to Members. If it is available, I wonder whether the Minister’s office could photocopy two dozen copies and pass them around.

[Ian Lavery]

It is extremely important with Bills of this nature that there is consultation with all parties that could be affected. Part 3 was introduced in July without any prior notification. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) said, there have been only eight working days since then. There has been a lack of consultation and there might not have been any. We have received legal advice that, because this is being done without prior consultation, it could violate the rights to privacy and freedom of association that are enshrined in the European convention on human rights. What is my hon. Friend’s view of that?

[Ian Murray]

There is a very strong view that part 3 contravenes the European convention on human rights. The Committee will discuss that in some detail when it considers clause 37. That just shows how part 3 is being rushed through.

I say to the Minister that I am happy to pass around a hat so that Opposition Members who want to see the impact assessment can pay for the photocopying and so that her office does not have to waste paper. Perhaps she could come to the Dispatch Box and tell us whether it is available.

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[Ian Lavery]

Of course that should be the case, but I am not sure that the Opposition should ask the coalition Government even to try to be sympathetic to the trade union movement. I would be afraid of their response. I know that it would not be positive. Perhaps instead of taking away 90% of trade unionists’ facility time, they would take 95%. That is an example of the ways in which the trade unions have been attacked by the coalition Government.

[Ian Murray]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case for why this dreadful legislation should not make it to the statute book. Given his vast experience of trade unions, can he think of any scenario in which it would be in a union’s interest not to keep an updated membership list?

[Ian Lavery]

Speaking from vast experience, it is always in a trade union’s interest to maintain the best possible record of its members, for a whole raft of reasons. A good trade union does not stand on its hind legs every week screaming, “Strike, strike, strike!” A good trade union needs the correct names and addresses of its members, so that it can address all the problems that society currently faces. This is not just about strike action, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly). That is always a last resort. But I will tell you something, Mr Sheridan. I was on strike for a full year during the miners’ strike, and what a brilliant year it was! I was fighting not for myself but for the wider society, for jobs and for communities up and down the country. It gives people a lot of pleasure if they are taking action and suffering greatly for those reasons. My father and my four brothers were all on strike—my mother had a hell of a job—but we enjoyed it because we were fighting for others. That is what the trade union movement is about, and that is why I get terribly upset by the constant union-baiting from the Liberal Democrats and of course the Tories.

It is in everyone’s interest to keep accurate records. Under the measures that were introduced in 1992, trade unions have to have that information for balloting reasons, among others. They normally have to send a full membership list with the annual return form, the AR21, to the certification officer anyway. The problem was that whenever we tried to take any type of democratic industrial action, the employer would say to me as the local representative, “You’d better have the right names and addresses. If you haven’t, we’ll get an injunction. Then, under the law, the union will be liable for any loss to the company resulting from strike action.” At the same time, the employer obviously had a list of everybody’s names and addresses. A responsible employer has everyone’s name and address in order to pay them—some trade unionists might prefer to keep their identity private—so surely it should be incumbent on the employer to allow any change in name and address to be passed on to the relevant trade union so that the union can act in accordance with the law. Is that too much to ask? It is feasible, but it is a trap.

I was a representative at different levels of the union, and we would sometimes appear in front of the certification officer and often the High Court. If industrial action occurs, it might be said that somebody’s name has been spelt incorrectly or that somebody has died without people being aware of it in order to try to get that whole democratic process abolished. That is the problem with this legislation.

Many colleagues on both sides of the Committee might agree that bureaucracy is not always a dirty word. Since the Prime Minister got the keys to Downing street, the Government have promised to cut red tape. What have we seen? We have seen the Government making it easier for people to be hired and fired for no particular reason. They have gone to work with some zeal in attacking workers’ rights at every opportunity, and they have relaxed health and safety legislation. The unions have rightly opposed all those things, which they won in the first place.

I have said before that it is funny that the only area where the Government have sought to increase bureaucracy is in the administration of trade unions. This will not be for the last time either. Unfortunately, this coalition, with Liberal Democrat support, will continue to oppose and attack not just trade union members, but many of the most vulnerable people in society. That is what they are about. As I have said, I believe that at the ballot box they will reap what they have sown. That, by the way, is democracy.

This Bill is undoubtedly about ideology. It is a thinly veiled attack on a movement that the parties on the Government Benches despise. We could move on to deal with the duty to appoint an assurer, but at this point I would like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South and of course the shadow BIS Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), who has highlighted another issue relating to another problem with these lists: they will allow organisations to increase blacklisting, which is already the scourge of the working class. Because of information being passed willy-nilly from employer to different secret organisations, some people are on blacklists. At the end of the day, these people and their families can suffer greatly for the rest of their lives.

That is a problem with the data. The new rules will mean that three new groups will have access to individual membership details—three new opportunities for data to escape into the public domain. Several organisations have raised a concern—I have already mentioned it—about the legality of that. The trade union movement and its individual organisations have a duty under the Data Protection Act to ensure that the information they hold on individual members is kept secure, but this new legislation when passed—not “if”, because it will be passed—will prevent that from happening. There will be a legal contradiction about who is right and it will be up for legal challenge.

I think that in any other country, action such as this on the part of a democratically elected Government would be condemned as an attack on free trade unionism, and I think that that is exactly what is happening in this case. It is about time that the coalition Government sat back and paused, as they have in the past. It is time that they consulted others, got the legal position right, and then returned with reforms that actually meant something and changed something. I look forward very much indeed to the Minister’s response, which should take all of one minute.

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[Ian Murray]

That is a good comparison to make, because I would bet that every one of the 166 trade unions registered with the certification officer in this country has far better membership records than any electoral register held by an electoral office. That is not a criticism of the valuation joint boards or local councils; it is simply because people are transient and move in and out all the time, so it is impossible to keep a 100% accurate record. I would guess that the trade union membership lists are far more accurate than such electoral registers.

Finally, I wish to deal with the rather unusual terminology used in clause 37. The word “satisfactory” appears in the proposed new section 24ZD(3) whereas the term “not satisfactory” appears in the proposed subsection (4). The use of that incredibly strange terminology could result in a lack of consistency and direction for assurers. It only fuels the fire in terms of us thinking that that this proposed piece of legislation is designed either to create additional casework or additional case law as some of these issues are taken through the courts, or to keep trade unions busy in the courts trying to justify what is “satisfactory” and what is “not satisfactory”.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines satisfactory as either

“satisfying demands, expectations, or requirements; adequate”

or “atoning” for one’s sins. I hope that the Liberal Democrat Minister will satisfactorily atone for her sins before the next general election—[Interruption.] I would be more than satisfied if she atones for her sins by accepting our amendments on this part of the Bill or, indeed, deletes the clause altogether.

Just how badly this Bill is drafted is shown by the fact that it contains such wide definitions of a term that relates to its fundamental objective in terms of the production of a membership audit certificate. Will the Minister, or indeed the Secretary of State, be determining by guidance what “satisfactory” and what “not satisfactory” means in this context? Will the definitions of and guidance on those two terms have them as exact polar opposites? It is important that that is made clear.

I would term this entire clause 37 as not satisfactory, in sympathy with what is not a very satisfactory Bill. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about the Data Protection Act, the significant and real concerns about blacklisting, and the responses from lawyers from Liberty and various other organisations about the inadequacies of this clause in respect of the European convention on human rights. I ask hon. Members to support our amendments.

[Ian Lavery]

Like most people in the Chamber, I am unaware of why we need assurers. The certification officer, under the trade union and labour relations—TULR—regulations, clearly states that when a trade union submits its annual accounts, its AR21, it must also submit a copy of the names and addresses of the membership. I am puzzled—discombobulated, perhaps—by the fact that the Government are suggesting that we need somebody in the middle to ensure that that happens, because if a union does not submit its membership with its AR21, it is in big trouble with the certification officer.

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[Ian Lavery]

It is up to a trade union and its membership to decide what they want in that union’s rules. It should not be for Government diktat to insist what an independent trade union should and should not have in its rulebook—surely that is undemocratic. Under the democratic process, what should and should not be in a union’s rulebook is decided at conferences following discussions among delegates from the regions, not by the coalition Government. My hon. Friend raises an interesting point because if the Bill is passed, must the 166 trade unions on the certification officer’s website immediately call conferences so that they can adhere to the new legislation? What will happen if they do not?

[Ian Murray]

As always, my hon. Friend is making a fantastic contribution, but if he reads several of the qualifications in the impact assessment, he will see that the strange thing is that the vast majority of the unions— 120 or more—will self-certify their membership audit certificates because they are so small.

[Ian Lavery]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, but it makes us ask why on earth the clauses are being proposed in the first place.

Why are we having assurers and who are they likely to be? With their position layered between the trade union movement and the certification officer, will they be legally qualified? Will they be lawyers or, as is likely, accountants, or will they just be thoroughly decent people? Will they simply be independent people? Could they be people in this House? We need to examine this extra layer of bureaucracy. There is no need for it whatsoever, but if we must have these assurers, who on earth will they be?